Strategies for Managing Rogue States

In the ongoing debates on how to manage relations with rogue states such as North Korea and Iran, the opposing policies of both hawks and doves are unrealistic in their pure forms. Throughout American history, presidents have faced the same choices the Bush administration now has when dealing with adversaries abroad: appeasement, engagement, containment, rollback, and non-entanglement. Each of these five basic strategic alternatives has potential advantages and risks. In analyzing how these have applied to U.S. relations with Iraq, North Korea, and Iran—the so-called axis of evil—it becomes clear that rollback and appeasement are the riskiest options and containment the most promising. Elements of diplomacy, however, can be used in conjunction with a primary policy of containment to head off threats from rogue states.     

Does Competition Law Influence REACH Consortia?

The new European Union Regulation for the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals which came into force in June 2007 requires companies to work together on information relating to substances in their products in order to share data and the cost of generating new data, in order to minimise animal testing and reduce the financial burden associated with testing costs. Registrants of the same substance will be allocated to Substance Information Exchange Fora and may even form their own consortia, all with their own potential Competition Law aspects.     

Community Capacity Building: A Critical Evaluation of the Third Sector Approach

Throughout the advanced economies, public policy has become ever more deeply involved in developing the capacities of communities to help themselves. Until now, this has been pursued through facilitating the development of community-based groups. The aim of this paper, however, is to critically evaluate the implications and legitimacy of this public policy approach that views developing community-based groups and community capacity building as synonymous. Drawing upon empirical evidence from the United Kingdom, it is here revealed that this third sector approach of developing community-based groups privileges a culture of community involvement that relatively few engage in and is more characteristic of affluent populations, while disregarding informal acts of one-to-one engagement that are both a more popular form of community involvement and also more characteristic of the participatory culture of less affluent populations. The paper concludes by exploring how public policy might respond, especially with regard to the finding that less affluent populations have relatively informal cultures of engagement.     

The Agent–Structure Problem and Institutional Racism

My aim here is to demonstrate the relevance of meta-theoretical speculation to policy design and implementation through an examination of the agent–structure problem. I then apply this problem to the concept of institutional racism as developed in the Macpherson inquiry into the death and subsequent police (mis)investigation of black teenager Stephen Lawrence. When considered through the lens of the agent–structure problem, the account of institutional racism developed in the Macpherson inquiry still lacks a solid analysis of the structural causes that help explain the phenomenon. Policies developed on the basis of the account will necessarily fail to address some of the causes of institutional racism. Careful attention to the agent–structure problem can help illuminate potentially unexplored areas of the social field that might help in controlling or eradicating racism.     

Cold floor effects on homicide

The cold floor pattern (a lack of homicides on days with extremely cold temperatures that was found by Cheatwood in Baltimore) is to be expected by chance. Under a model in which the number of homicides and the maximum temperature are independent, the probability that a day will fall below the cold floor is small. The Baltimore data do not support a model in which extremely cold weather suppresses human aggression.     

Climate Change Meets the Commerce Clause: Obstacles and Alternatives for State and Local Responses to Climate Change

Abstract

Climate change is a global problem resulting from our aggregate emissions. The United States has failed to take significant action on a federal level to address our country’s contributions. There are options available at the state and local levels to reduce emissions and to prepare for the effects of climate change. However, the commerce clause and the doctrine of federal supremacy may bar states and municipalities from adopting those strategies. This article discusses tactics to circumvent those restrictions, and potential changes to commerce clause jurisprudence that would give states and municipalities greater flexibility to act where Congress has not.